Chores

We normally blamed clumsiness. The slipperiness of 99-cent-store dishwashing liquid, or fatigue in hands fresh from twelve hour shifts.

Honestly, the dishes were just tired. Too few in number and washed too often, they dreamed of an escape -- any escape, really -- from the endless cycle of hot water and being racked together to dry. The dishes hated the endless chatter about money that wasn't there, the slow singing of mournful songs over wash water, hoping for love that never came.

So we thought that they'd been dropped. They never needed the notoriety of the act, but it was suicide all the same.

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Author's Note

I've grown enamored of microfiction -- a chance to drop a tiny little grenade of content into someone else's brain -- and this is one of (what I consider) my early successes. The older I get, the more I appreciate the breadth of my life experience, as it's given me much better dramatic grist from which to draw.

Comments

Thank you. I hope a touch of anthropomorphism can both introduce a little wonder and maybe let us know that some of this really doesn't matter all that much. Or I could be a pretentious shmuck. Hard to tell some days. Thanks either way!

It seems that the mix of specific details (99 cent dishwashing liquid, twelve hour shifts) and the metaphor or abstract thought (washed too often, the dishes were just tired) or the blend of both (endless cycle of hot water, endless chatter of money that wasn't there, singing mournful songs over wash water) that makes this story so successful. P.S. I think many/most/all of us can relate to being caught in "an endless cycle of hot water" :) Nicely done.

"The dishes hated the endless chatter" [about money that wasn't there] is a great line because the washers chatter but the dishes "chatter," too. It seems the place in this suprising story where the metaphor most meets. Star.